ROSANNA RUIZ, Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle |
August 25, 2008

Marion Sitton, now 88, had a reputation at Timely/Marvel Comics as an artist who would get a panel right.

Photo By KAREN WARREN/CHRONICLE

Marion Sitton points out some of his artwork in his Houston apartment as he talks about his career as a Timely/Marvel artist in the 1940s and '50s.

Marion Sitton sat mum as Stan Lee looked over his artwork. Sitton studied the future Spider-Man creator's face as he took in the OK Corral scene Sitton had completed the previous week.

Lee praised the authentic-looking boots and other lifelike features of his cowboys.

"You can draw," he said, "I'll give you that."

Those words granted Sitton membership in 1948 into Timely Comics' artists bullpen. During the next six years, he was one of dozens of artists at Timely, later renamed Marvel, who drew dueling cowboys, fedora-wearing mystery men and embracing lovers. Superheroes were not in his repertoire.

"I didn't do the stories," the 88-year-old explained recently. "They would give you all the blurb, all the copy. Then you would have to illustrate it, panel to panel, and you had a certain amount of poetic license."

While few can recall the early days of the comic book industry, Sitton and his memories share space in his Houston apartment, where pen-and-ink posters from those long-ago comic book pages cover his walls.

His hands are slightly twisted from arthritis, he walks with a cane and his eyes require glasses, but Sitton stays busy with his artwork. He mostly paints these days, producing masterful images of birds suitable for the pages of Audubon.

The love of art that he discovered at a young age has never left him.

His interest began when he was a small boy growing up on a farm in Hale Center, in northwest Texas. He would often replicate newspaper comic strips.

"I just loved it from the beginning," he said.

His years at Timely, which had offices inside the Empire State Building in New York, initially were intimidating. Eventually, he said, he settled in and gained a reputation as an artist who took the time to get a panel right.

"I was never real fast," Sitton said. "I had this drive to try to do the best I could. One time I picked up a script, one editor said, 'One thing about you, Sitton, I know you're going to fill the page.' That was a compliment."

Sitton would draw the characters and background in pencil. Other artists applied the ink.

Relative obscurity

It was an unparalleled time in the comic book industry. There were more comic book houses in those days, flooding the market with innumerable titles. Now, comic books must compete with television cartoons, video games and other forms of entertainment.

"The style, the artwork was a lot more clean and crisp," said T.J. Johnson, longtime owner of Third Planet, a comic book store. "Even without reading a lot of words, it told a story in and of itself."

Johnson's personal collection includes true-crime comics from Sitton's era, but he did not recognize Sitton's name when asked by a reporter recently. The name also was unfamiliar to those at Profiles in History, a California-based auction house that deals in original comic art.

Sitton and other artists operated in relative obscurity and never enjoyed the fame reserved for the likes of artists like Jack Kirby, who co-created X-Men, Fantastic Four, Captain America and other characters.

Often, artists' names were not even included on their works, particularly those like Sitton who drew the comics but did not ink them. In some instances, only Sitton's last name appeared on the pages of Western, crime and romance comic books.

Lost work recovered

It was that last name that caught the eye of Michael J. Vassallo, a collector and comic book historian who says he spent years trying to determine who "Sitton" was.

He came across the name while researching obscure comic book artists from the 1940s and 50s. He said he has tried to track down those artists so their contributions are not entirely lost.

One day in 1996, Sitton walked into a comic book store in Dallas and told the owner he was looking for some of his old comics to replace ones he had lost in a fire.

The store owner called his friend Vassallo, who finally had a first name to tie to dozens of comics. He wrote an extensive feature about Sitton in the June issue of Alter Ego, a magazine for comic book enthusiasts.

Vassallo said he was able to replace many of Sitton's lost pieces. He was even able to develop an eye for Sitton's unsigned works.

"I could see his artwork under someone else's ink," said Vassallo, who also is a New York dentist. "He was very surprised I was able to find all that stuff."

Few artists from that era are still alive or their identities remain unknown, he added.

"I think what they did was important — this is part of Americana," Vassallo said.